MORE than 100 people across the county have tried to make a killing by selling phones and other devices to cash in on a new craze.

The iPhone app Flappy Bird was pulled from the App Store this month by its Vietnamese creator Dong Nguyen, who said on Twitter he could not “take this any more”.

It has been downloaded 50 miliion times and was earning about £30,000 a day in advertising revenue.

Now people are looking to make hundreds of pounds by selling copies they already own.

Earlier this week on the free listings website Gumtree, there were more than 100 Oxfordshire-based ads for smartphones and tablets with the app.

Yesterday it was down to around 20, although it is not known how many of the devices have now been sold.

Among the sellers were Scott Prior, 38, from Didcot, who downloaded the game onto his iPhone for his son Jake, eight, last month, and is advertising the phone and app for £1,500.

Mr Prior, a builder, said: “It’s just a bit of fun really – although it would be great if someone did pay us £1,500 for my iPhone. I bought the game weeks ago for Jake to play, but he got bored of it pretty quickly.

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“When we saw how people were paying large amounts to get hold of it, we thought we’d be cheeky and give it a try, too – although I really don’t think that someone’s going to offer the £1,500 we’ve asked for.”

Mum-of-three Helen Hargreaves, from Holton, near Wheatley, and daughter Molly, 12, decided to put their iPad and iPod touch up for sale for £2,000 and £500 respectively.

Mrs Hargreaves, 48, told the Oxford Mail: “We thought we should put it up and see what happens. I think it is ridiculous myself. My daughter plays it – I cannot do it. I just don’t know what it is all about.”

On whether she would spend thousands on a device with the app, she said: “I wouldn’t, but I think these young ones would. It is worth a try.”

Molly said: “I got quite addicted to it and I want to play it more and more.”

Bicester Community College sixth form student Ben Holt has listed his iPhone 5s with Flappy Bird for sale on Gumtree for £4,000.

The Bicester 17-year-old said: “I had seen that the app had been taken off the App Store and I saw how it was popular. There was a lot on Twitter about the frustration of not being able to get it anymore.”

An anonymous woman from Didcot, who listed her iPhone 5 with Flappy Bird for £1,250 said: “Personally I wouldn’t pay a grand for it.”

The furore surrounding Flappy Bird has now led to Google and Apple rejecting all new apps with word ‘flappy’ in their title.

Following the game’s deletion, a rash of ‘flappy clones’ flooded the online marketplace.